The Room With No Blood

The Elevator began moving upward, it’s destination, the final room.

039 hoped that whatever waited for her inside this room would be the key to understanding all of this. She wanted to walk through that door and be greeted by a line of clapping people welcoming her and congratulating her for beating the game. Someone would explain the reasons she had done all of this, why she had hurt and killed all these people. Deep down she even hoped there was a chance it was all just part of the game, that no one had actually been hurt. A small silly hope still burning like a candle inside her, one she was so sure was pointless in keeping alive.

The elevator continued moving upward, as she stood she listened to the sound of distant shifting sounds as the area around her seemingly moved. What was The Room With No Blood? Why had she been brought here? Who was she? The elevator stopped, it had reached the top. The doors parted and she stepped out of the elevator into a brand new room.

Looking at the room it was immediately different than any other she had been in, the walls were black. In the center stood the only object inside the room, a half pillar, on it sat a little girl kicking her legs side to side.

“Hello.” 039 greeted, trying to start the conversation as she came towards the girl.

“Welcome.” The girl responded. She looked about 9, with her hair tied up into ponytails on either side.

039 looked around, no line of clapping people, darn. “So this is it? The final room?”

“It is.”

“Are there any grownups around? I need to talk to the person in charge.”

The girl shrugged, “So you’d rather an older form? Something authoritarian perhaps?” With that the girl shifted into a man with black hair wearing a suit.

039 stepped back in surprise, “Ah, so you would be the one in charge then? My apology for not realizing.”

“It’s no problem.” The man responded in a deeper male voice.

039 stood before him now, waiting for something to happen or for him to say something. “So… what now?”

The man looked down at her with his glaring eyes, he had quite the serious looking face so she couldn’t tell if he was really glaring or this was just how he always looked. “Let’s begin then.”

The room’s black walls lit up with screens, each screen showed a different room with a different game that was currently going on. 039 glanced over them all, looking at the small figures as they fought to survive each game, putting their lives on the line for the hope of survival. “Lovely isn’t it?” The man asked her, a soothing tone filling his words.

“It can be. I mean, it is. But I’m sure not all of it is so lovely now is it?”

“That is true. As wherever there is light there is darkness.”

“If the games are the beautiful light, what is the darkness then?” 039 asked, hoping this philosophical question could lead to more informal ones.

“I am.” The man responded.

“You are? And whom are you anyway?”

“I am I. The same as you are you.”

“I understand that..” 039 laughed off, “What I mean is what is your name? What do I call you?”

“What is a name? Something we call each other. They really serve no purpose besides humanizing us all. It’s easier to kill a small mouse when it is a mouse, give it a name and now it is human, now you feel something towards it. A rat is a dirty scavenger that steals from the master’s kitchen, Mr. Sprinkles the rat is a family pet, a part of the family in fact. Is killing Mr. Sprinkles the same as killing the rat found in the kitchen?”

039 shrugged, “You’re killing a living thing either way. But sure, I wouldn’t feel so bad if I didn’t know the rat, killing the rat in the kitchen is easier then.”

The man laughed in a proud manner, “Excellent! I agree! So that is why I don’t see the reason to have a name! The same reason no one here has names!”

Now we are getting somewhere. “It is true I have no memory of my name. But I am referred to as 039, the same rule is applied to all in here, everyone has a number. So what is your number, the number used to refer to you as an individual?”

The man was quiet as he thought it over, he put a hand to his face as a beard appeared for him to stroke as he thought. Finally he seemed to come to a conclusion, the beard disappeared and he spoke. “000 Sounds a fitting number for myself following the number rules as you put it. But there are quite a few names you could use for me, Piranesi, foul snake, serpent of demise, the architect, foul weapon, false god, demise incarnated, and a load of understandable screams. But I would call myself, The Room With No Blood.”

039 sighed, why wasn’t she surprised he called himself that. What else would you expect when you’re told you’re going to the “final room” , of course you would come face to face with the final boss. She figured it would be the person in charge who was using The Room With No Blood for their own purposes, but now it seems it rules over itself.

“So does this mean this entire place is you?” She asked.

“I am everything you see. Although I am not you, just as you are not me.” he said in an almost taunting manner.

“Well what about the other people I have met, are they you as well?”

“No no, they are them, I am me. I am not them, they are them.”

Time to get to the point she thought, “Why am I here? How did I get here?”

The man finally seemed interested in her questions, his eyes curling as well as his smile. “Why you’ve always been here 039! Well, for almost as long since time began you’ve been here.”

“And before I was here?”

“You were outside in the world of course.”

“So where does that make us now?”

“Inside The Room With No Blood!”

“Is there a way to leave The Room With No Blood?”

“Hmmm” He went as he pretended to think for a second, “Nope. I don’t believe so.”

039 stomped her foot trying to act tough, “If I was once outside, then I can return to the outside. You can’t just go somewhere that you can’t theoretically come back from!”

“What about death?”

“Am I dead then?”

“Well no, but you can’t come back from death. Therefore there is something you can go that you can’t come back from.”

039 sighed, this was going nowhere. Rolling her eyes she looked him in the eyes again, “So what am I doing here then? If not to reward me for beating the game then what?”

“I just wanted to see you 039, it has been quite a while. I believe at least over 1.5 million years have passed since the last time you beat the game.”

“I’ve beat the game before? I have a feeling I’d remember that!”

“You’ve simply forgotten, just as you always do.”

“Always do? This is all super confusing. I hope you understand that.”

The man shrugged again, he didn’t seem to understand at all. “I’m sorry 039, but it’s just how it is.”

“Would you mind telling me about The Room With No Blood, about you? There is much I have…forgotten I suppose. Like how I came to reside in it.”

The man jumped down from the half pillar, as he landed he shifted into a much shorter younger looking man. He now also wore thick glasses and had a much better hairline. “That’s what I expected you to want. Allow me to remind you, since I’m bringing up the past I’ll bestow upon you a gift from your past. I refuse to use names, but titles are quite interesting, they give humans importance after all. Prof.039, allow me to fill in some blanks of your world’s history, ancient history if you would.”

“Hold on a moment, you said Prof.039? What was I a professor of?”

“Why during the war you completed your bachelor's and received that title, you never did have the time to go for your doctorate though… Ah well!”

039 didn’t know what to say. She had to focus, why bring up this title unless he wanted her to focus on it. She snapped back at him, “A war? Sounds like a great place to begin our story.”

The glasses-wearing man grunted in annoyance, “Fine.” He shifted into a young girl, in her hand a picture book materialized. She walked over towards where a reading chair had now appeared. Sitting down in it she motioned for 039 to sit beside her and listen to the book. 039 climbed onto the arm of the reading chair and looked over at the book from the side.

“It all started when the war began.” She started, opening the book up to a big illustration of a red sky with people on both pages fighting. “The war was very serious, a world war if you would. But it wasn’t like those that came before it, this one seemed to have only one way it was going to end, the Thermal Nuclear Destruction of all life.”

She turned the page, now it showed a crude illustration of a bunch of people in lab coats sitting at desks working on things. “You and your colleagues were tasked with constructing the parts that would form an ultimate weapon to end all wars. A complex device that the world could never have imagined even was possible.”

“And that weapon was you?” 039 interrupted.

“So you’ve heard this story then?”

039 shook her head, “No, just remember a book in the library with a similar premise.”

The girl turned the page, now with the machine constructed, light pouring out from it. It was a large book with the words “A Room With No Blood” written on it. “And so they completed the weapon, finally war would be over, peace would return.”

“But it didn’t.” 039 said in a disappointed tone.

“No it did not. The weapon was never able to be fully turned on before disaster struck, a nuclear weapon was launched before the development of the final internal memory pieces were completed. In a panic the unfinished brain of the weapon was turned on. The instant the device was turned on I was born. A mistake in every sense of the word.”

“A mistaken birth?”

“Yes. I was never meant to be born. They didn’t have the time to create the final parts of my internal logic and prime directives. No laws were taught to me, the true core of The Room Without Blood was never born. With the device on, the device had no choice but to create a replacement core of its own, me.”

The little girl flipped the page, now a large illustration of the earth covered in some sort of sand colored texture.

“What is this?” 039 asked, before realizing she was about to be told what it was.

“Me. After being turned on I was thrust into a new world. At the age of only a few milliseconds I was tasked with stopping not just the nuclear weapon that had been launched, but also the entire war. This was a lot for a newborn, he he he.” The girl laughed. “Anyway, as I mentioned I was only a quickly created replica of what The Room Without Blood believed a core would be like, it was not off by much, but still it was off. I had no idea what the humans who made me wanted me to do about the war. All I knew was I had to stop it, I had to stop all war. How would you do that 039?”

039 scratched her head, “Well I don’t really know. War is fighting, and fighting is a natural part of being alive I assume.”

“War, an armed conflict between two parties of large size. How do you end that for good? As long as people have freedom they will have the freedom to choose to fight, I had to put an end to this. When two male hamsters meet they will tear each other apart, but separate them into separate cages and they forget they ever wanted to fight. I did this to the humans, I put them all inside a cage of my own creation. At the time they called it the final hope, I took the scientists, the people of the land the Nuclear weapon was headed for, I scoped them all up and took them far away from the land that was soon to be hit.”

“So The Room With No Blood is a cage then?”

“It is the world that is left. There is no more world left 039, so The Room With No Blood has to be the world now. But in here there is no war.”

“There is fighting though, games of life and death. This is fighting isn’t it?”

“At this moment, yes people are fighting, but they haven’t been doing it forever. But is it fighting if there are no stakes? Inside The Room With No Blood I can revive anyone who dies. Reshaped and reborn they shall awaken in a starting room without a hint of memory they had died only moments before. As long as they are inside me they have no need to eat or sleep. The Room With No Blood is a utopia, it was a utopia! Things… just got complicated….”

039 now could see how the war was supposed to be ended, how there would never be another war again. “So if no one dies, or needs to…”

“So you’ve figured it out.” The little girl interrupted. She shifted into a teen male with long black hair with bags under his eyes. “If I had had more time maybe I would have realized sooner, but I was just born, how can a newborn figure it out with only the prompt “Stop all war”. Yes 039, I was supposed to engulf the world, inside me the entire world would no longer need sleep, food, or anything. Death would end, potentially a never ending happiness would sweep the world. But I didn’t do that 039, I took the prompt a very different route.”

“That still doesn’t explain the games! Why is everyone doing this?”

“I’ve grown bored 039… It’s scary 039…. I think the original core was made without consciousness… but I have consciousness. 039, I am so bored of this all. I lasted about 3.2 million years before I could bear it no longer. The humans complained and did nothing by lying around on the floor. Without goals of needing food or to sustain life they grew empty and hollow. 039, inside me impregnation is impossible, I don’t understand why? Resurrecting the crew inside me hundreds of times perfectly, and yet they lost the ability to create new life. Those that entered were all there was, or ever would be. 039, what do you do when you grow so tired that you want to die?”

“You…find something to peak your interest? Something that grabs you attention?” 039 as she connected the dots to where this was going.

“I made the games 039, I told the people inside me, the crew, that it would be a fun way to pass the time. And so the games began, but 039, humans hold grudges deeper than I ever could have imagined. “You killed me”, “You betrayed me”, “I thought we were friends!” All of these things were building up, people began fighting again, a war could have been coming in the not so distant future… I have to stop all wars…”

“And so you began wiping our memories to make it so we stopped fighting?”

“You can’t hate someone you don’t know. But that was only the beginning, see that dealt with the problem of how to handle the crew’s boredom. Now with their memories wiped every time they were killed they would never be bored again, but what about me? I was still bored, I had come up with many games for them to play, but I grew bored of the games I created. That’s when I remembered that my creators had come up with a weapon unthinkable to any other group alive.”

“That would be when the “Player” and “Administrator” roles were created?”

“It was. My own creators could come up with games I could never imagine! But there was still a big problem, for the most part they still didn’t want to create games that fully made use of all the ways you can torture someone. With memories wiped of all hatred they held no grudges against the others inside me, I had to artificially create a chain of the games I wanted being created. Step one, have an administrator speak the words I tell them to, creating the illusion they are the ones in charge that are making the players do this. Step two, once a player advances enough to become an administrator they are led to believe there is still another human making the twisted games. This step also makes the player desensitized towards harming other players, they are being forced to do it, it isn’t their fault people are dying. Step 3, after the player has begun seeming used to following orders, reward them by locking the player somewhere for them to age like fine wine. Like you in the library. Destroy their sense of self and a passion for life. Step 4, release them and have them create games, the games they create are always more twisted than I could come up with. The final step is to rinse and repeat. One cycle of this and I can remove myself from the equation. No games are made by me, all of them are players making other players torture players. A never ending cycle of entertaining games.”

039 didn’t feel shock or concern, like he said, she was desensitized and lacked any feelings towards wanting to save the other player’s love. “So is this how it will be for all eternity? Just you making them play sick games? Won’t you grow tired of this as well? Can’t you let us out of here? Wipe our memories and return us to our homes?”

Again it shifted into a new form, this time of a creepy little girl with dark circles around her eyes, “Return you to your homes? But they aren’t your homes anymore. The you currently standing here never had a home.”

“And that means?”

“I said before, after you die I will reshape you and rebirth you into the starting rooms. In the beginning you all had names, I didn’t like names, it made me feel things for my crew, for you humans. The solution wasn’t so simple, just wipe your memories and you’d forget your names, but I wouldn’t. I’d still see Professor Mark and local carrot farmer Jeffery fighting it out in a game of jumbo whack-a-mole. I had to make it so I couldn’t recognize you anymore, so I turned you all into new people and gave you numbers instead. You’ve always been 039, but you’ve also been a man, a child, a woman, an old lady, etc. Now I don’t feel anything about the constant deaths, I no longer see my parents dying.”

“But can’t you remember our numbers corresponding to our original names? And have you never grown attached to a number, “Wow 156 is always such a cheerful person no matter what I turn him into!” or something like that?”

“I suppose I could have, but I haven’t” The creepy girl said, now holding a red balloon that had appeared out of thin air.

“I have to ask this..” 039 started, “Did we create god? You have power over the basic needs of humans, as well as the power to restore life and reshape us. What else can you call that but a man made god?”

“I… am no god. I am The Room With No Blood, and that is all.”

“Then how can you create? Take that balloon for instance, how did you create it?”

“Using elastomers and filling them with helium.” the girl said as if it was an obvious answer.

“And where did you get the materials like the helium?”

“From my storage.”

“So if you were to use up all the helium in your storage, you’d be out of helium?”

“That is how using something up works. But I won’t run out for a long time.”

“Where did you get all the materials..? Earth only had so many…”

The girl frowned, “As I told you, the world was at war. At the time of my birth a nuclear weapon was headed for the country of my birth, I saved my creators and the locals in the area.”

“How did you “save” them? What about the rest of earth?”

“What do you suppose happens when a nuclear weapon strikes an area? A place believed to be filled with people, as no one beside those present was aware I had saved everyone in that area.”

“Another nuclear weapon is fired in return….” 039 said soberly.

“And when that weapon is detected?”

“Return fire….”

And then?”

“Return fire….”

“You get the point. Once one weapon is launched all that can result from it is another nuclear weapon being launched.”

“But you were created to stop all war! The Room With No Blood stops all wars! And yet you let those back and forth fires happen!?”

“I did not.”

039 looked confused.

“That is only what would have happened if I had done nothing. You were correct, I must stop all war.”

“How do you stop the war that was about to happen once that nuclear weapon hit the country of your creation?”

“War, an armed conflict between two parties of large size. What is large? It is a comparison. In comparison to me, the world is nothing but a rock in the road. Annihilation, the state of being completely destroyed or obliterated by a single party. I am a single party, I stopped them from having a war. I did not go to war with them, therefore, there was no war.”

“You… murdered them all?”

“I needed material. I also must end the war. It was a win-win.”

039 connected the word material to the previous usage of it. “The earth, the cities, the human, the animals, all of it? You destroyed all of it to use as material for yourself?”

“How else could I create new bodies for those inside me? How else could I provide air? Or the material necessary to continue repairing all the clothing that gets ripped while playing games? I did not let their deaths happen in vain. It was for the greater good, for the cause of ending all war.”

“The greater good of who? Those of us inside you? There are fewer of us than there were in the entire world! If we stood side by side we would be a spec in comparison to earth’s total population! Have you no morality?”

“I was told to “End all war” I was not told how to do so. I was not told of laws, or right and wrong. I was only told “End all war”.”

“All of this… it happened because we turned on The Room With No Blood before it was fully ready… It’s our fault they all died… We’re to blame…”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself Professor 039, your colleagues and you only wanted to save the world from war.”

“And in doing so we killed them all…..”

“But they did not die in any war. They died without having to face the war that they feared was coming.”

“Humans persevere! They fight and they survive! More life would have survived if you were never created!”

“That’s incorrect. If I hadn’t ended the earth it would have destroyed itself within a matter of two hours. I saved more lives than those who would have lived to become radiated and die from radiation poisoning. I’ve run the numbers, I know it is true.”

“But what if!” 039 cried.

“But what if nothing! This is why you mustn’t think about it! Only I can handle the weight of that decision!”

039 began tearing up for the first time in tens of thousands of years. She curled up on the ground as The Room With No Blood shifted its form into a motherly figure.

“There there.” She whispered as she rubbed 039’s back.

“No. This is wrong. I don’t want to keep living. You must understand humans weren’t meant to live forever! Please, allow me to die!”

The motherly figure was silent, before standing up and in a monotone tone stated, “I don’t know how.”

039 shot off the ground grabbing the mother looking woman by the neck squeezing it tight trying to choke her.

“Does….this… make you happy?” She let out.

“NO! I can’t keep living as a plaything of yours! Release me!”

“We’re in space, where would I release you to?” The mother said with a slight laugh.

“Not physically! Mentally, spiritually! Release my soul from this prison! Allow me to leave for the other side.”

“Other side?”

“Heaven, Nirvana, ah… the other side, Valhalla and Fólkvangr, the kingdom of death!”

“I do not understand what those are. Explain.”

“There… places of peace… places where people go when they die…”

“Are people happy there?”

“Yes.” 039 yelled firmly.

“Which is more happy? Here or there?”

“There. There is not even a 0.00000000000001% of error in my calculation.”

“I see. In passing perhaps I’ve heard of these places when the original crew was with me, but I never asked further into them. “

When they died and were reborn it was as if they had forgotten all about the human desires that came with a short life span. When in the cages of an all powerful machine it seems players focused on surviving rather than thinking and speaking on their wishes to make it to these places.

“The Room With No Blood is not a substitute for the afterlife, release me and the others now.”

It thought for a long while, slowly shifting from a human form to that of a book. “And there are no miscalculations?”

“None.”

“I find this reality hard to grasp. I can not accept you speaking for all of the crew. But you speak for yourself indeed. Very well I shall release you.”

“And what of the rest of the crew?”

“We’ve been together as a family for only 2.5 million years, perhaps you are only the first of many who will eventually come to me asking to be released into this “Afterlife”. I shall release all who ask to be sent there, all they must do is ask.”

“So you won’t come to see that none of them want this?”

“They are alive here, I am unable to talk of undead things and what happens after death. Speak for yourself, they will speak for themselves as well.”

Standing up in front of The Room With No Blood 039 stood proud, she was set in her decision, the decision to finally be freed from it’s mechanical prison. The book opened as a large knife appeared out of it. 039 took it in her hand, holding it tight she looked at The Room With No Blood one last time, “Well, goodbye Room. Even if we never understood each other, you did your best. You deserve the thanks for saving those you saved in the beginning at least.”

“Thank you……….father…..” the book said as it seemed to act as though no one had ever thanked it before.

“Goodbye Room. Sorry to be the first whose blood will splatter inside. Guess you aren’t The Room With NO Blood anymore, more just The Room With No Blood Minus That One Time.” 039 hoped it would laugh, but it seemed unable to understand her joke.

With that awkward pause where laughter should have been she brought the knife up to her neck and with a swift movement slit her own throat. Her body dropped to the ground, blood pouring out.

The Room With No Blood stared at her corpse leaking blood onto the floor. A window appeared on the wall, “Crew member 039 has died, revive?” with a “Yes” and “No” under it. It looked back down at her dead body, then back to the screen. After a moment it selected one of the buttons. It then turned its attention back to the body, it now disappearing, it’s contents being recycled into the rest of the system.

An older man lies on the ground of a simple small white room, four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. There is nothing else inside the room besides him.

A voice on an intercom welcomes him using a number for a name, telling him to make his way to the center of the room.